The Scott we know and love

With Scott McClellan making the rounds with his book and trying desperately to repair his thoroughly obliterated credibility, now seems as good as ever to revisit some of his greatest hits as press secretary. Ben Craw, you’re up.

I guess now we know where that deer-in-headlights look came from and why it was so entertaining. It turns out that McClellan’s obvious discomfort on the podium was only mostly due to incompetence. The other big problem for him as press secretary was that he had a soul.

Does that make me feel a little guilty about the schadenfreude I got from watch his press conferences? No, not particularly – if he’s writing a tell-all now, that means that he knew how fucked-up everything going on around him was, and just rolled with it until they finally threw him under the bus. Just because he’s got a little bit of a conscience doesn’t mean he’s not a spineless toady. All that this shows is that he’s at least capable of feeling shame. An improvement over Ari Fleischer, Tony Snow and Dana Perino? Certainly. But if he’s capable of shame, then I hope he’s feeling quite a bit of it right now.